Progress and a piece of vintage stitchery in the making!

I like to think that my designs and 

work speak to me somehow. 

That when you are putting it all together it

shouts out to you, and you know you are on the

way to making a beautiful piece of fabric art, and

new life is being blown into old materials to be loved once more !

Having decided on the materials for my design it was time to start cutting fabrics and putting them together in a way that they can then be stitched to form the base of this, my latest design.  I actually designed this piece last year and have not used it until now.

I had ideas of what I wanted to use in way of fabrics and I had designed each square for embroidery & appliqué but it is only when you actually start cutting and piecing that you see your work jump from a page into a 3D piece of art.  Then is the time to change anything not looking correct in your minds eye, before you start to stitch together and hand embroider.  As the old saying says 'Let your work speak for  itself '.

The picture on the left is the first one that I took and then decided to change some bits of the fabric and use some ribbon made from beautiful vintage fabrics, torn to fray slightly rather than a wheel cutter straight an clean line......

So the picture below is some of my vintage fabric ribbons and these will be stitched to some of the squares before they are all stitched together to form the base of this sampler.  Then the fun begins with embroidery and appliqué and you can watch it all form and blend together.

I still have some cutting out to do and whilst I am cutting I am going to cut out a further project for me to pop into a basket ready to stitch ... it seems like a good use of my time and motion.....

I will tell you all about my visit to Tilly - D and the room in a book shop in Cranborne, Dorset, on Monday, by which time Iwill sort out photo's etc over the weekend but for today enough hooky has been had, soooo, I must settle down to the business of making this sampler and I am loving putting this together.  Plus look out for my post next week on the great Vintage Bazaar  .... I am so looking forward to it tomorrow.  Maybe some of you who are reading this will be there too. 

Have a wonderful weekend and please come back tomorrow because there is a further tutorial about suffolk puffs/yo yo's and this time it is about stitching together properly to be strong and secure.  I am going to incorporate some 1930's suffolk puffs into this piece of work as well ... It is exciting watching this design leap from a page in my design journal to being real somehow now, the ones I have chosen are in the first picture at the top..

Happy Stitching!